“A Reflection on Stephen R.

Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People of Stephen R. Covey has become the
cornerstone of leadership and management wisdom. The habits emphasize personal
development, personal responsibility and personal leadership. In life, people have different
situations, different experiences, different perspectives, different experiences and different
decisions to every happening—be it good or bad. However, we must never forget that “Your life
doesn’t just ‘happen.’ Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you. The choices,
after all, are yours. Just remember that every moment, every situation, provides a new choice.
And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more
positive results.”- Stephen Covey. Our selves are our greatest asset. It is up for us if what bound
to happen in the future will be different or not, if it will be for positive results or not.
It is actually quite challenging to live in these modernized times. There are several
complications and problems that will come on our way, but what we can control is our
responses towards certain situations. These habits of Stephen Covey help me to understand
how I can develop, change and become better in life. The seven habits of highly effective people
according to Stephen Covey are:
1. Be Proactive: is when proactive people recognize that they are "response-able."
They don't blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their
behavior. They know they choose their behavior. Reactive people, on the other
hand, are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to
blame for their behavior. 
2. Begin with the End in Mind: is to envision something that we want to achieve. This
is where you will ask yourself: who you want to be, what you dreamed you'd be,
doing what you always wanted to do? Be honest. "People are working harder than
ever, but because they lack clarity and vision, they aren't getting very far. They, in
essence, are pushing a rope with all of their might.” – Stephen Covey. If your ladder
is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place
faster. 
3. Put First Things First: is about focusing on the tasks that help you achieve your most
important goals and fulfill your personal mission. 
4. Think Win-Win: lays emphasis to makes things cooperative instead of competitive
because both parties are mutually benefited. He further said that a win-win attitude
brings three key character traits including integrity, maturity and abundance
mentality.
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: This requires balancing
consideration for the needs of others, with the assertiveness to stand up for your
own. For Covey, this combination of consideration and assertiveness is what gives
rise to maturity.
 6. Synergize: means “two heads are better than one.” Synergize is the habit of creative
cooperation. It’s a process, and through that process, people bring all their personal
experience and expertise to the table. Together, they can produce far better results
that they could individually.
7. Sharpen the Saw: On this, Covey emphasizes cultivating the key assets that we have
in ourselves. According to him, we should renew the four core dimensions (physical,
spiritual, mental, and social) of our lives. By doing this, it becomes easy for you to
increase your growth, handle difficult challenges, and entirely change the life you
used to live before.
If I would have a time to read the full book of this, I would gladly read it as I think that it is very
interesting to read and it will give you a life long learnings in life for personal development and
maturity. I think that all of the habits mentioned are very important in order to change for the
betterment. Most of the time we tend to try to do everything that comes our way. We race
with the clock to accomplish everything on our desks even to the extent of sacrificing health
and family. We fail to realize that we do not need to unnecessarily overstretch ourselves.
Prioritizing things is also managing our time. I also learned that you must not only try to defend
on yourself, encourage a win-win approach. It is having a balance between courage for
acquiring what we want and consideration of what others want. This creates harmonious
relationships at anything. Through mutual trust people can be open to each other’s influence.
Individual differences can create something greater than each of our own potential. More ideas
will yield better outcome. As a conclusion, reading things like this will help you recognized the
lessons you must not missed about life and it will help you grow intellectually, mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually.